Introduction

The Power of … Introduction!

A lot has changed since 1982.

A toy isn’t enough anymore. In fact, a toy isn’t considered successful without its matching lunchbox, comic book series and prose novel tie-ins, Saturday morning cartoon with syndication and home video releases, a video game released across multiple platforms, and a live-action Michael Bay film franchise with platinum-selling soundtracks.

The modern definition of a successful brand depends entirely on its presence across the vast spectrum of contemporary media. The concept of cross-media franchises is not new, exactly, but it has been gaining momentum like a snowball rolling downhill. Speed picks up, and new layers are collected as the franchise becomes broader and more powerful. As technology expands the possibilities for our entertainment, a franchise develops new venues for exploitation.

A toy cannot simply be a toy. A toy must be an idea, vast and mutable, to be interpreted into any shape or size for any age group or demographic. A toy must be a way of life, as toymakers are inviting their consumers to define themselves by it. The things we enjoy become the things we love, and what we love is who we are. There are plenty of ways to spend money to express ourselves and show our love.

For example, we can look to one of the most successful franchises of the 2000s: Harry Potter. As Jay Lemke wrote in Critical Analysis Across Media: Games, Franchises, and the New Cultural Order: “The Harry Potter franchise is a new kind of cross-media or meta-media object. The complete experience of its ‘discourse’ involves participation with all these media: not just reading the books, but also viewing the films (which differ significantly from the books) and the DVDs (which include material not in the theatrical-release films), playing the videogames, wearing the clothing, buying the toys, visiting the websites which are linked to the books, films, and videogames, and even perhaps eating the candy.”¹ Harry Potter is far from alone. Every successful commercial property for the past several decades have been a multi-pronged attack, from the fast food tie-ins to Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace to the music videos from the soundtrack to the movie adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey.²

Many of these multi-faceted strategies are purely mercenary: if your fan base loves your toy/film/book/et cetera, they are more likely to pay money for its tie-ins and adaptations. If a fan likes a movie, they might play its video game. If a movie is received well enough, it may warrant a sequel, or its own cartoon. Fans will want to wear a t-shirt announcing their fandom. If they like the comic book, they might read the novel it was based on. The wider the net is spread, the more viable options there are for the fans to spend their money on. Every dollar they spend on your franchise is a dollar not going to a competitor.

The omnipresence of merchandise elevates the brand from mere entertainment to a lifestyle. Fans are encouraged to label themselves as such, so there can be no question of who is a “Trekkie” (Star Trek fan) or a “Whovian” (Doctor Who fan) or a “Twihard” (Twilight fan) based on nothing more than their hats, scarves, and haircuts. Symbols and logos become perfect fodder for tattoos; we are literally branded by our favorite brands.

In 2005, film historian Edward Jay Epstein wrote about Hollywood’s “Midas formula” for Slate magazine. After listing the most profitable media franchises of the time, such as Star Wars (1977), Spider-Man (2002), and Pirates of the Caribbean (2003), he noted that they all tend to follow the same outline in terms of story and storytelling approach.

One key factor involves aiming for the correct audience: children. Many of the most successful and profitable media franchises are based on children’s books or comic books, which are typically seen as a kid-friend medium, along with action figures and theme park rides. Original concepts, such as a Star Wars, still skew toward children’s sensibilities. In order to keep that ideal demographic, most cross-media brands steer away from overly violent or sexual themes. According to Epstein, “This ensures the movie gets the PG-13 or better rating necessary for merchandizing tie-ins and for placing ads on children’s TV programming.”³

The plot lines of these successful franchises may feel familiar to audiences as well. The stories tend to follow the structure of Joseph Campbell’s “Monomyth,” also called “The Hero’s Journey” or the “Hero with a Thousand Faces.” As Campbell described the archetypical tale, “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”⁴

An awkward or weak young person receives a call to adventure and discovers something special in themselves, something that allows them to overcome darkness and return home a hero. The story was common before the likes of Luke Skywalker and Peter Parker, but continues to resonate with audiences for a reason. Viewers love to see themselves in the protagonists, to imagine their own adventures and escapes from the mundane. This fantasy actualization of power and success brings them back again and again, be it for a sequel or for another franchise altogether.

The Monomyth structure also suits itself well to children’s stories. Many successful media franchises feature a young person as the hero, allowing for another way for their ideal market to identify with the story and characters. In the example of Harry Potter, the characters may also grow older as the stories progress, allowing them to age with the audience. Thus stories may darken or mature to keep pace with the developing tastes. Those initial fans can go onto introduce younger siblings or even their children to the same stories, letting them grow up with the characters, like they did.

Name recognition goes a long way. Readers or viewers may not be as willing to invest the time and money in what is deemed an untested product. But when a property conquers one medium and jumps to another, even if an individual is not a fan of the original product the new version is based on, it is seen with a level of cross-media pedigree. Merely recognizing that product and seeing it has been successful enough to warrant a jump into another medium can speak to its value, and encourage consumption.

If the property is an original concept, it will revolve around characters ideal for translation into toys and other merchandise. For example, if a successful franchise character wasn’t originally based on an action figure, they can still get an action figure made in their honor soon thereafter.

Another key element to Epstein’s “Midas formula” is cutting edge technology. No matter what the level of special effect sophistication is when the film or television branch of the franchise comes about, everything must be top of the line to make the maximum impact. If audiences, especially children, aren’t gripped by the wonder of what they’re watching, they won’t be as likely to buy, or ask their parents to buy, the subsequent merchandise. Audiences continually grow jaded at a younger age, so new frontiers must be broken in order to win a war for dwindling attention spans.

In these “special effects movies,” the special effects truly are the star of the show. While there may be a “big name” actor or two in the cast, the lead is often played by someone previously undiscovered. And though actors like Christopher Reeve (Superman) or Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) go on to successful careers with soaring paychecks, they are often stuck in contracts to play that same character in sequels for surprisingly low pay.

There are exceptions to every rule, of course. Despite plenty of borrowing, The Matrix was an original film, instead of being based on a well-known property. Twilight’s target audience is made up of teens instead of their younger siblings. Johnny Depp was already an expensive, household-name actor when he signed on for the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and other franchises, such as the novel Fifty Shades of Grey, likely hadn’t anticipated the level of success that would require them to branch out into the cinematic domain. Still, there are more than enough successful brands that follow the formula to lend credence to Epstein’s article.

However, strict adherence to what has worked before is no guarantee of a hit franchise. The footnotes of popular culture are littered with brand names that attempted to expand but fell apart for a variety of reasons.

Rights issues, such as actors’ likenesses, held back the expansions like The Real Ghostbusters (1993), an animated tie-in to the ’80s film Ghostbusters. Overestimating a concept’s appeal (the pulpiness of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension in 1984) or an actor’s drawing power (Ryan Reynolds in 2011’s Green Lantern) can bring franchise dreams crashing down. Audience’s appetites and expectations can be difficult to predict. Even potential franchise “slam dunks,” such as the Will Smith vehicle and TV adaptation Wild Wild West, can fall apart.⁵

One key example is the 1998 remake of the famous Toho Studios monster, Godzilla. The project came together as Hollywood had truly ironed out their media franchise formula: a brand that was already a household name was paired with producer Dean Devlin and director Roland Emmerich, the masterminds behind hits like Stargate (1994) and Independence Day (1996). Godzilla had top-tier actors and action figures, a soundtrack filled with popular artists, an animated series debuting the same year, fast food tie-ins, and a family-friendly PG-13 rating. Still, Godzilla is now an infamous example of a Hollywood franchise flop.

The official budget for the film was $130 million, a number which typically doesn’t account for marketing, which was extensive. When the worldwide box office gross came in at $379 million, it wasn’t enough for the studio moneymen to consider it a success. Tri-Star already had two sequels in the works when Godzilla premiered. These were both scrapped quietly.⁶

So where did Godzilla go wrong? By most accounts, the failure came down to an issue of quality. The film was lambasted by critics, “winning” the Golden Raspberry award for Worst Remake or Sequel, and was widely disliked by a majority of audiences as well.⁷ Though negative reviews don’t necessarily kill a franchise, audience support is very important. A movie can get decent box office receipts from crowds that leave unsatisfied, but franchises are built of repeat viewings. Audiences need to love a film, or a toy, or any other brand seedling so much they’ll be excited to see it or play with it again and again, until they can experience it in another format.

Many also saw the franchise as expanding too broadly, too quickly. The entire endeavor appeared calculated, like a cynical plot to raise as much money as possible. It’s possible the audiences were turned off by an apparent desperation.

There is no easy way to make a successful cross-media franchise. Even now, when the “Midas formula” has been so perfected, there is no guarantee a wide-branching concept will not wither and die with no sequel in sight.

The cross-media franchise was born of adaptation, a method of borrowed storytelling that’s been common for well over a century.

Sherlock Holmes Baffled was released in 1900. There is some debate about whether it is an adaptation in the true sense of the word, as it is not abundantly clear whether the man in the silent film is intended to be Holmes. More likely, some argue, the character’s name was included in the title to capitalize on his fame.

As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was still writing stories about Holmes at the turn of the century, this could be seen as an early attempt of one media to exploit the success of another. Unlike other early adaptations of Lewis Carroll or the Brothers Grimm, Baffled had a symbiotic relationship with the then-current stories. Fans of the books could see the character in live action, and vice versa.

Another early example of a film adaptation working as cross-media brand was the Tarzan of the Apes silent feature of 1918. Edgar Rice Burroughs was still writing his Tarzan novels at the time, and the film and its sequel, The Romance of Tarzan, are considered very faithful adaptations of his first book.

Still, many consider the true founder of multimedia branding to be Walt Disney, as his studio created Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. The film is rightly considered a classic cornerstone of cinema, informing the contemporary Disney princess “formula” and our modern interpretation of fairy tales.

Disney also used Snow White to introduce the concept of a movie soundtrack. As a musical, the film had a host of original songs written for it, which Disney released in conjunction with the theatrical run. It was nominated for Best Original Score at that year’s Academy Awards, and set the standard for multimedia releases. It is especially notable for being an official tie-in made by the same studio as the film, not a tie-in from selling the rights to company specializing in a different form of media. In that aspect especially, Snow White was ahead of its time.

The net of cross-media properties was spread wider by Superman. He first appeared in Action Comics #1, in June of 1938 and took America by storm. National Comics, soon to become DC Comics, wasted no time in expanding the visibility of the world’s first superhero. As author Jake Rossen explains in Superman Vs. Hollywood, Superman’s creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, did not own the rights to their own creation, and had no say in the way he was used. They were “entitled to no recompense when their character appeared in another medium,” Rossen wrote. “If National felt the urge to prostitute him in wildly unfaithful incarnations, the duo could do little but sigh.”⁸

But adaptations, especially those first ones, were good to Big Blue. Today, everyone knows the famous line “Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!” and know that the character is described as “faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!” Many know Superman’s pal, Jimmy Olsen, and the bald head of the villainous Lex Luthor, not to mention the deadly effects of Kryptonite, the radioactive pieces of his home world. However, these famous elements of the mythology did not appear in the original comic book pages. Adaptations expanded the mythos and shifted the focus of the character, taking him from smaller feats, like stopping an abusive husband in Action Comics #1, to flying around the globe fast enough to reverse time in 1978’s Superman: The Movie. In fact, the character only became the character we now know him as once he began appearing in multiple formats.

Superman was less than one year old when he became a “strange visitor” to another kind of storytelling: newspaper comic strips. The Superman strip first appeared in January of 1939, and went on to debut the magical prankster character Mr. Mxyzptlk and Luthor’s now standard appearance, complete with a bald head. These changes would go on to be incorporated into the monthly Superman comics and the public consciousness.

In February of the next year, Superman made the leap to radio. The Adventures of Superman brought the character to life through Bud Collyer, who alternated his voice from meek to booming to differentiate between Clark Kent and Superman, a technique that has been used in practically every incarnation since. The series also bolstered the supporting cast, introducing Kent’s boss, Perry White, and photographer Jimmy Olsen, who have become mainstays of the comics and future adaptations. Perhaps most importantly, radio gave us Kryptonite. When Collyer needed a break from the recording schedule, the showrunners created Superman’s signature weakness as a way to write out the show’s star for several episodes at a time. Per Rossen, “listeners sat in rapt attention as Superman did little more than moan in the background, felled by the noxious mineral.”⁹

The year 1941 brought about the Superman series of animated shorts by Fleischer Studios. The pilot episode was nominated for an Academy Award, and the series is still highly regarded to this day. The cartoon carried over many innovations from the radio series, including Collyer and the voice cast, while adding elements like the “Up, up, and away” catchphrase. It even introduced the idea of Clark Kent dashing into a telephone booth of all places to his costumed identity.¹⁰ As these cartoons were initially played before feature films in cinemas, Superman also marks the character’s first appearance on the big screen.

The next year, a novel also titled The Adventures of Superman was released, retelling the character’s origins in greater detail. And so within five years of his creation, Superman had spread across several branches of media, not including the merchandising, or the eventual live-action serials, films, and TV shows. In addition to the impressive success of these adaptations, it is also of particular importance to see how the innovations in one medium influenced the other. More than mere tie-ins, the disparate works built upon one another and made the brand stronger in terms of content as well as visibility.

The effects of National/DC’s expansionary ideas are still being felt in popular culture today, and a great many franchises have followed in Superman’s footsteps.

As time progressed, new and varied forms of media became available. With the dawn of television, home video, and video games, film studios and other tastemakers have hurried to keep up with the times. Along with these leaps in technology, more conglomerated companies own the means to release their own tie-in media. This allows for a uniformity of creative vision: no longer allowing the maker of a cartoon spin-off to, for example, drastically alter the source material.

Studios, publishers, toy companies and the like have also learned from the successful multimedia expansions of the past. Original music released as film soundtracks, as opposed to just orchestral scores, are now common for non-musicals. Films such as 1989’s Batman were released with both tie-in scores and soundtrack albums. Cross-media endeavors, such as a tie-in cartoon, are prepared in conjunction with a film or video game just like the t-shirts and other merchandise. It has become expected to release your product like a tidal wave across these varied forms.

This was taken a step further in 2008 with the success of Marvel Comics’ Iron Man film. In a post-credit sequence, top-tier actor Samuel L. Jackson appeared, surprisingly unannounced, in a role as superhero handler Nick Fury. One quick mention of forming a team of superheroes over the course of the next few Marvel movies sent fans’ excitement over the top.

Audiences were energized by the dangling carrot of sequels and spin-offs and a whole “cinematic universe,” where one character could pop up in another’s film and the events of Film A could have ramifications in TV Show B. Quickly, building the franchise into interlocking films became the key motivating factor instead of simply an efficient way to maximize profitability. With each successive Marvel film, their Cinematic Universe grew wider and profits soared.

This became the norm. DC Comics, Marvel’s four-color rival, announced their own cinematic universe in 2013. In 2015, toy company Hasbro announced a “multi-property universe” of their own, to consist of existing movie franchises GI Joe and Transformers along with new, live-action incarnations of ’80s toys like M.A.S.K. and the Micronauts.¹¹ That year, Universal Studios began talk of uniting its remakes of classic monster movies the same way.¹²

Every successful movie wasn’t merely required to have a matching toy line or videogame, it also needed to fit into a broader universe of collective stories. Dangling plot threads became common place, and the arcs of cinematic universes trumped the individual stories of single films. Release dates for sequels or spin-offs began to be announced before the original film was even released. Well-received cartoon series were cancelled if they don’t sell enough tie-in merchandise.¹³ Every branch of a cross-media empire must be successful or the entire endeavor is considered a failure.

And so media franchises are capable of expanding too broadly, collapsing under their own weight, and the entire Universe can be felled quickly if one aspect underperforms. Studios must be cautious even as they invest billions of dollars, and filmmakers must approach transmedia like a wary safe-cracker. Even as wide-reaching media franchises have become the standard operating procedure for our entertainment, there are seldom safe bets. How does Hollywood know what properties are ideal for the big screen, small screen, book and t-shirt and everything in between?

Media franchises have come a long way since Sherlock Holmes Baffled to reach the levels of the modern transmedia matrixes and cinematic universes. But as quickly as technology developed to allow for these new branches of media and ease of their exploitation, the road was not always simple or easy. There were battles to be fought over the correct place of franchises, especially those following the “Midas formula” closely enough to focus on an audience of children.

Two important breakthroughs in the emergence of the modern media franchise belong to the same franchise: Masters of the Universe.

Masters followed the “Midas formula” almost perfectly. It began life as an action figure, with He-Man and his friends and enemies targeting perfectly the young male demographic interested in strength and wish fulfillment in the ultimate battles between good and evil. It built a solid brand with a very recognizable name before attempting to break into the other forms of entertainment available in the early 1980s.

However, it was the first toy to attempt such a leap. Before the animated series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe debuted in 1983, no other action figure brand had attempted to cross into the world of children’s cartoons, and with good reason: such adaptations were heavily regulated by the Federal Communications Commission.

There had been rules set in place for decades to govern the amount of advertising allowed on the airwaves, and special attention was given to those that were targeting children. The latter was guarded even more zealously by grassroots watchdog groups. ACT, or Action for Children’s Television, was the loudest voice speaking against advertisements during children’s programming. That group of concerned parents would monitor the shows for a correct amount of advertising time, and making sure the presenters or programs themselves weren’t advertising a product. If a certain show or broadcaster were not following the FCC’s regulations to the letter, they would threaten to report them to the government. Their threats tended to work.

The ACT’s track record was more mixed in their dealings with the National Association of Broadcasters. They began pressuring the NAB in the 1970s to do away with advertising during children’s broadcasting altogether, but succeeded only in limiting commercial time from 16 minutes per hour to 12. Still, the group was a well-known crusader looking to protect impressionable children by enforcing regulations. But in the 1980s, “regulations” became a dirty word.

Newly elected president Ronald Reagan appointed Mark Fowler as the chairman of the FCC in 1981. Following Reagan’s free market approach, Fowler began rolling back the regulations that had been determining television content to give corporations a shot at winning over Saturday morning audiences. “Television is just another appliance,” he said in 1981, “it’s a toaster with pictures. We’ve got to look beyond the conventional wisdom that we must somehow regulate this box, we must single it out.”¹⁴

Just like that, television became another element of American life and entertainment left to be determined by the open market. Objections from groups like the ACT about advertisements directed at children, or what they’d determined was marketing disguised as content, would no longer hold back enterprising toy manufacturers. This also opened the doors for cross-media franchises to expand into new territory.

This threshold was approached gingerly at first in 1982, with an animated series based on the video game Pac-Man. The home video game market then was not the powerhouse it would later become, so the show was a minimal success and didn’t cause too many waves with concerned parents. The impact of The Pac-Man Show was largely symbolic.

No punches were pulled when Mattel and Filmation unleashed He-Man and the Masters of the Universe a year later. Though it was already a very profitable toy line, the entire concept of turning a toy into a cartoon was too untested for the major networks. Even some smaller, regional broadcasters were uncertain. There was no guarantee success in the toy store shelves could translate to high ratings and happy sponsors. And then there was the wrath of the ACT.

Though they were defanged by the FCC’s recent reversals, the groups of upset parents were not giving up their fight for advertisement-free children’s programming. Broadcasters were still wary of facing their wrath, or inspiring more to join their cause by airing something that really was “a thirty-minute toy commercial.”

There was also some concern over the stories Filmation would be telling. Would it be too violent? Would it send the wrong messages about power and weapons? Would the villains, like the skull-faced Skeletor, be too scary? Mattel and Filmation worked to address each concern in the program, but minds were not necessarily set at ease.

In the end, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe premiered and Reagan’s free market spoke. The show was a hit.

The networks noticed this, and so did the toy manufacturers. Within the next few years, GI Joe, Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and other toy properties followed He-Man and Skeletor onto the airwaves. The market was glutted, and the decade became infamous for the not-so-subtle advertising of cartoons based on toys.

Soon, the symbiosis between toy lines and their accompanying cartoons grew stronger. Instead of using a cartoon to bolster the success of an already-existing toy brand, it was made in conjunction with the same product it was capitalizing on. The action figures would hit the shelves at the same time as their series debuted, blurring the line between the two products far more than ever. Thanks to an enterprising Mattel and the raw appeal of the He-Man character, media franchises turned a pivotal corner.

The heroes of Eternia were also responsible for the next leap forward a few years later. Though popular franchise characters had been adapted into celluloid from mediums like books (Sherlock Holmes Baffled), comics (1978’s Superman: The Movie) and TV (1970’s House of Dark Shadows), an action figure brand had yet to be brought to life in a live-action movie. With the blockbuster success of the He-Man cartoon, Mattel saw no reason not to push the boundaries once again. The company began the process of finding a movie studio to sell the rights to.

They quickly received the same treatment from studios they’d received from television broadcasters. Some were interested in trying to spin a household name for toys and children’s programming into a verifiable action film, but the toy company also received a great deal of cold shoulders. Whether due to filmmakers’ creative concerns or a more general cinematic snobbery, He-Man had to prove himself all over again.

Mattel accepted one of several bids, this one from the Cannon Film Group. Cannon had a reputation in Hollywood as a scrappy underdog studio, often skewing toward exploitation, and typically more focused on producing a remarkable number of films than the quality each one contained. Still, they’d produced some bona fide hits in the ’80s, such as the dance picture Breakin’ (1984) and Chuck Norris vehicles like Missing in Action (1984). A Cannon film was a guarantee of a finished movie made for a reasonable, if not minuscule, budget. Without investing too much into the film, Mattel reasoned it could get a sizeable return from the box office based on their franchise’s name recognition alone.

The production of Masters of the Universe was fraught with problems, though. The impending bankruptcy of Cannon Films and waning popularity of the He-Man toy line backed the idealistic first-time director Gary Goddard into a corner. With building pressure and slashed budgets, the director was forced to pay out of pocket just to see the project through to completion. The movie was released on August 7, 1987. The resulting box office wasn’t what Mattel or Cannon had hoped for.

However, Masters of the Universe as a film displayed just how strong the franchise was as a mutable concept. Though jettisoning many of the fan-favorite Filmation characters and ideas, the end product stayed true to the Masters of the Universe brand. It was still unmistakably He-Man: the villains were cruel and monstrous, the heroes were brawny but pure, and elements of both sword-and-sorcery and science-fiction were uniquely juggled. Even moving a majority of the film’s events to Earth from the outlandish Eternia couldn’t distance it from the source material.

Though Masters emerged as a shockingly competent film, given its behind-the-scenes problems, it wasn’t the carbon copy of the cartoon many fans wanted to see. General audiences stayed away. For most, a motion picture based on a children’s toy was far too unusual and an utterly untested idea.

Approaching the 30th anniversary of Masters of the Universe, it’s obvious how much that mindset has changed. Between 1987 and 2017, the idea of a live-action film based on a toy franchise became rather common-place.

The ivory tower of cinema was chipped away at slowly throughout the late ’80s and ’90s. Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns made impressive strides for comic book adaptations in 1989 and 1992, and they were quickly followed up and imitated. The Garbage Pail Kids made the leap from gross-out trading cards to the big screen in 1987, and the Super Mario Bros. video game became a movie in 1993, but neither went over very well. Garbage Pail Kids is roundly considered one of the worst films of all time, and the surprisingly cheerless Super Mario Bros. isn’t remembered much more fondly.

Then in 2007, Michael Bay and Hasbro rode a wave of ’80s nostalgia to box office glory with the first installment of their Transformers film franchise. While ostensibly respectful to the established mythology of the heroic Autobots and evil Decepticons, Bay inserted time-tested elements to make the adaptation a success: goofy, non-sequitur humor, the inferred patriotism of American soldiers as supporting cast members, a dorky boy meets cool girl storyline, and plenty of gratuitous shots of Megan Fox bending over. Though many fans weren’t pleased by the backseat their old action figures took to Shia LaBeouf’s shenanigans, there were enough references to the original to win them over.

Transformers was a palpable hit, and more than that, it was a cross-media juggernaut. After its big opening weekend came the new action figures, the new animated series, the trailers for the next film, and so on. Twenty years after Masters of the Universe made its attempt, audiences were finally ready for a blockbuster movie based on a toy franchise.

Hasbro followed this success with their other big toy property from the 1980s: GI Joe. Though 2009’s GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra did fairly well at the box office, it wasn’t as well received as its predecessor was.

Audiences found it cartoonish and overly broad, while critics poked at its plot holes and disappointing special effects. Worse, hardcore Joe fans complained about the liberties taken by director Stephen Sommers. Still, one disappointment did not end the new cross-media expectations. The Joes got their sequel. Transformers got four, and counting.

These blockbuster adaptations added fuel to the fire of franchise expansion. Transformers led to films like Iron Man and The Avengers (2012), big-budget and crowd-pleasing, but still shockingly faithful to the source material for their devoted followers.

Despite reworking the franchise to fit the new medium and reach broader demographics, the existing fan base is recognized to be one of the most powerful tools in a brand name’s arsenal. Even more dormant franchises, like that of Masters of the Universe, can count on a devoted group of followers to clamor for more material featuring their favorite characters. But those characters still need to be handled correctly. If situations like the first GI Joe film are an indication, Hollywood has learned that the importance of appeasing this ready-made demographic cannot be overstated.

With the success of these massively expansive media franchises comes scholarly interest and study. What makes certain franchises, like Star Wars, take off while others, like the 1998 remake of Godzilla, crash and burn? How does one concept expand properly into other field? How do the creators know when they’ve over-expanded? By studying the current pop culture landscape, we can attempt to anticipate the next big trend for studios or, as cynics have been mentioning for years, when the “bubble” of seeming-niche franchises like superhero films will burst. Looking backward allows us to see ahead.

But those two massive strides in the evolution of pop culture, the formerly plastic He-Man’s jaunt into animation and live-action, are not highlighted in the annals of pop culture history like Burton’s Batman or Joss Whedon bringing the failed film property of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to success on TV. By studying the rise of the Masters of the Universe franchise, we can get a grasp on the early trailblazer to the modern interpretation of cross-media phenomena. When we look at where the brand began, and the way it grew, we can watch the adolescence of our own experiences in pop culture.